Last night was the awards banquet at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for Omicron Delta Epsilon, one of the world’s largest academic honor societies. Per the Omicron Delta Epsilon website, their objectives include the “recognition of scholastic attainment and the honoring of outstanding achievements in economics; the establishment of closer ties between students and faculty in economics within colleges and universities, and among colleges and universities”

The dinner was very nice (salad, rice, lemon chicken, asparagus, carrots, chocolate cake and coffee) and the awards presentation was very tasteful. I am still very impressed with the interest the Economics professors take in the students, for example Professor Pratt remembered our conversation in which I mentioned that I worked as a tax preparer. She joked that she was surprised I was able to sneak out of the office on the second to the last day of tax season.

All of my former professors remembered my name, maybe because we wore name tags, and they were all very friendly. Thanks to the generosity of one of our benefactors we had a lovely dinner and all of the inductees received a nice two volume copy of Adam’s “The Wealth of Nations“.

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The high point of the dinner was watching my professors very politely argue with the guest speaker about the causes and metrics of international economic growth. Most economists apparently love to argue. I would personally like to send out a special thanks to Professor Alan Rabin (his most recent book can be found on Amazon.com) for organizing the event and going out of his way to make sure I was a part of it.

Tags: Economics, Food, Honor Society, ODE, UTC, Wealth of Nations